Meta is now making Llama available for US government agencies, defence projects and other private sectors working on national security. They’re also extending their partnership with companies like Accenture Federal Services, Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI and Snowflake to help government agencies adopt Llama.
“These kinds of responsible and ethical uses of open source AI models like Llama will not only support the prosperity and security of the United States, they will also help establish U.S. open source standards in the global race for AI leadership.” said Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs in a blog post published from Meta.
The blog post also highlighted how their partners are aiding the adoption of Llama. For example, AWS and Azure are supporting governments by hosting their models on their secure cloud services. Lockheed Martin has also already integrated Llama in their factories, leveraging its capabilities for code generation, and data analysis.
“Large language models can support many aspects of America’s safety and national security. They can help to streamline complicated logistics and planning, track terrorist financing or strengthen our cyber defences,” added Clegg.
China Is Reportedly Using Llama for an AI Chatbot
The announcement comes after reports that China was rumoured to be using Llama for its military applications. Researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army are said to have built ChatBIT, an AI conversation tool fine-tuned to answer questions involving the aspects of the military.
It didn’t take long to invoke fear in the AI community, with torchbearers like Vinod Khosla going all the way to criticise Meta’s Open-Source approach.
There are specific technologies that should clearly remain under control to slow down their dissemination among adversaries. Those are things whose main usage is in defense: nuclear tech, hypersonic vehicles, radar-absorbing materials, etc.
Then, there is general purpose…— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) November 2, 2024
While his vested interest in OpenAI is bound to find an opportunity to call out Meta, Yann LecCun, Meta’s Chief AI scientist, did not hold back. He said, “There is a lot of very good published AI research coming out of China. In fact, Chinese scientists and engineers are very much on top of things (particularly in computer vision, but also in LLMs). They don’t really need our open-source LLMs.”
It’s fair to agree with what Yann LecCun is trying to say. China has already made notable progress in generative AI, and it was even claimed that Kai-Fu Lee’s foundational model ranks better than GPT 4o on certain benchmarks. Their indigenous approach towards advancements in technology is likely not going to change in the AI sector as well.
Clegg also added that “Widespread adoption of American open-source AI models serves both economic and security interests. Other nations—including China and other competitors of the United States—understand this as well and are racing to develop their own open-source models, investing heavily to leap ahead of the U.S.”
Earlier this year, the US Army announced that it’s investing $50 million in ‘small and nontraditional businesses’ to develop AI and ML solutions. Recently, the US Army also launched a generative AI platform called Ask Sage, which assists personnel in several aspects of software development.
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